Megadeth – Super Collider Review

Super Collider is the fourteenth full-length studio album by the legendary American Thrash Metal band Megadeth. It is their first album on Tradecraft Records and was produced by Johnny K with Dave Mustaine.

The internet was buzzing with venom when the band released the highly commercial lead single and title track ‘Super Collider,’ fearing that the album would be a return to the style of the unpopular Risk album, but it turns out that this track is a one off and wholly unrepresentative of the album’s direction overall.

The music on the album is a mixture of the less-Thrash material from the last couple of albums (think ‘Never Walk Alone’ or ‘The Right To Go Insane’) with the 90s Megadeth style (think ‘Victory,’ ‘Mastermind’ or ‘Architecture Of Aggression.’) Basically, if you took out the fastest couple of tracks on Endgame, this album would more or less be business as usual for the modern Megadeth; A continuation of Thirteen and United Abominations. If you don’t like those two albums I can’t see you liking this one, but if you do then this should prove another enjoyable collection of songs in that style. It’s a little more stripped down, midpaced and catchy, but no great departure like when they went from Rust In Peace to Countdown To Extinction.

As far as the actual tracks themselves go, they are all fairly enjoyable, with a unique intro, a few fun drumbeats or an enjoyable guitar solo to make them not feel like filler. There’s nothing on the album that I would get rid of. There were a few unexpected moments like a guest appearance by Disturbed’s David Draimen that is surprisingly fitting (and features the closest music on the record to a Killing Is My Business era sound), and a non-bonus track cover of Thin Lizzy’s ‘Cold Sweat’ which is an enjoyable and catchy way to end the record.

Its all of a relatively high quality that isn’t the best thing Megadeth have ever released but isn’t disappointing in any way, and the more you listen to it, the more it grows on you. Highlights include the swinging opener ‘Kingmaker,’ the slightly Cajun sounding ‘The Blackest Crow’ and the Endgame-reminiscent ‘Off The Edge.’

Overall; this is an enjoyable and consistent album, that is a bit of a grower and that fans of the last few Megadeth albums should be able to enjoy.

Side note: I accidentally bought two copies of Peace Sells on Vinyl, so I went into town to sell the extra one. I went into a Vinyl store, and sold it for a price that left me broke even. Success!

When I was doing the transaction however, for security reasons I had to show them ID and give them my address. To me, this evokes some kind of police measure for people who sell extremely high value rare vinyl (and I’d imagine the same goes for comic books and baseball cards) to stop thieves. This reminds me of the story on the Lemmy documentary where somebody stole Lemmy’s own copy of Motorhead’s demo, and a fan bought it, but then the authorities found out, but Lemmy saw the guy who bought it was such a big fan that they decided to share it. Cool guy.

Anyway. Selling Peace Sells for a fiver is a Megadeth related side note.

Another one, is that I went to see a Megadeth concert in Manchester recently, and that saw the first time I bought a T-shirt from the people passing up and down the cue to get in. Before, at Down’s concert this had happened, and I didn’t buy one for fear of being sold a ‘fake’ T-shirt. But I just thought, ‘who cares’ its not as if it’s a holograph, I can still wear it even if it is fake. And I don’t think it is, because in each of the other concerts I’ve been to at this venue, the t-shirts being sold in the cue are always the same as the ones the band sell.

At this concert, the doors opened late and Bleed From Within only got to play four songs, while some rude, unpleasant, snobbish Death Metal Fan booed and hollered and gave them the finger to the point where the singer started reacting back.

Megadeth suffered the same treatment from a different fan (who Dave Mustaine deemed looked like Eminem) and Dave destroyed his heckling with frequent amusing stories and abusive comments (although in one of them he said something homophobic and that, in isolation, became a news story that week despite the fact that Dave immediately apologized for using that language and clarified that he didn’t mean to use that terminology, he only meant that the fan was an asshole, which incidentally was not picked up on by any of the news reports I read.)

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I wholly agree with you that an album can be enjoyable after repeated listens, but “Super Collider” for me did really…well…nothing. I’ve been afraid of Megadeth becoming commercial with their music to a point where I can’t tell the difference between the songs, where they all sound the same.

I’m not exactly surprised seeing as Dave Mustaine does write 85% of the material and the lyrics, so maybe this is the Christian Metal Megadeth. Oh well, there’s always the next album I guess.